Serialisation in the Daily Mail

“A very emotional read”

Daily Mail

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

NORMAN WOODCOCK

was born in 1897 in Cudworth and grew up in Leeds where he attended the Leeds Boys Modern School. He went to war in 1914, aged 17. On his return, in 1919, he worked in local government and at the Electricity Board. He joined the National Association of Local Government Officers (NALGO) soon after starting work, and became the full time district officer for Yorkshire and the northern region in 1937. From 1939-44 he worked in the Taunton office of NALGO, then he moved back to Yorkshire.

He studied at Leeds University, gaining a diploma in public administration and becoming a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Public Administration; a Fellow of the Institute of Personnel Management; and a Fellow of the Royal Economic Society. He retired with his wife, Clara, to Buckland St Mary in 1960 and died in Netherclay House, Taunton, in 1987.

SUSAN BURNETT

Norman’s granddaughter, Susan, was born in 1960, and grew up in Taunton where she was educated at Bishop Fox’s School. She gained a degree in mathematics from Leeds University and a masters degree in health services administration from Hull University. Her career began with the Royal Institute of Public Administration Consultancy Services. Since then she has worked in the health service in England and Wales, including as a director on the board of the National Patient Safety Agency. She is now a researcher and organisational consultant working in the Patient Safety Translational Research Centre at Imperial College London. She lives in Chepstow with her husband, where they have a large vegetable garden and several bicycles. Click here for Susan’s profile at Imperial College: SusanBurnett

“A vivid story.. what it felt like to be a soldier in those times.”

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown – Author, journalist and broadcaster

The Book

My Grandfather, Norman Marshall Woodcock, was called up on the day war was declared in 1914, aged seventeen. He came home five years later having been to Gallipoli, Egypt, Greece, Mesopotamia (now Iraq), Libya, the Suez Canal, Sinai, Palestine, Jerusalem and the Western Front in France. For fifty years after his return he rarely spoke about what had happened but he cried each year on Remembrance Sunday. As he grew old and had time to reflect he began to write and in time he also began to answer the questions from his grandchildren when we asked him why he was crying. Usually he told us it was about his horse, Timbuc, but it was also about what he had seen, what had happened to his friends and comrades and about the futility of the war. ‘On that day I left my boyhood behind’ combines my Grandfather’s stories of the First World War with an accessible history of the war in the regions covered. The book starts in Leeds and Yorkshire, then moves on to army and signals training in Biggleswade, sailing to Egypt and the invasion of Gallipoli, then to Salonika and Greece, North Africa, Mesopotamia, Palestine and finally the Western Front on the Somme.

EXTRACT

On the evening of Saturday 24th April 1915, the ships were in motion, two hundred of them. We were to land at dawn on the beach at Cape Helles on the Gallipoli Peninsula, where the village of Sedd-el-Bahr stood. The fort nearby had been shelled by the Navy and was out of action we were told. As we set off, the shore around the harbour was lined with cheering troops.

Fortunately, the sea was calm as the battleships, cruisers and destroyers towed boatloads of soldiers the 50 miles towards the beaches. I was in a boat of the battleship Euryalis, towed by a steam pinnace, a patrol boat. It was to be a long night.

We were surrounded by the Fleet, when at dawn, about twenty miles out, the Queen Elizabeth opened fire. She was the flagship and the biggest in the Fleet, carrying 15-inch guns with a range of 20 miles. We couldn’t see the shells burst, but what a noise it was – rather like an express train going through a tunnel – but we could see the puffs of black, brown and white smoke they created. Then, as we came nearer, other ships joined in. Soon we saw a cloud on the horizon and the cry came ‘Land Ahead’.

We saw land before the enemy opened fire. Suddenly, all hell was let loose and we were amongst it. As we moved nearer to the beach, shells were bursting overhead, in the water, on the land, everywhere, all around us. Then the fire from the Turks got heavier, until it was like hail whipping up the water. Men began shouting and crying out but in our boat all we could do was watch and wait. The troops in the forward boats jumped out into the shallower water and we saw them fall – very few made it to the beach. Then as we drew closer, our boat came under fire too.

The noise was tremendous, but I seemed to have no fear, I don’t know why amongst all that noise and confusion. Then I saw my first comrade killed and the reality of what was happening came to me. A shell burst, hitting the boat and him. The boat was packed; all we could do was watch as he bled to death. His colour changed, he became whiter, the sunburn became paler. There was nothing we could do to help him. We looked at each other in the boat – some silently, some shaking, some shouting excitedly – all of us waiting our turn to land, knowing we could be next. We put his body over the side. I still see his face to this day.

A few brave souls managed to get ashore during all this, and we watched as they lay down under a low sandbank where bullets passed over their heads. Others died in the boats, crowded together. The boats drifted away full of dead and wounded.